ledge was contained in the Greek and Latin classics, and no sound opinion or polished taste was to be found out of the learned languages. From this groundwork, however, the moderns have raised a prodigious edifice, both of science and of literature, of the whole of which our school education, from eight to eighteen, takes no notice whatever. Not that I would cram the mind of a boy with the whipt cream of botany and mineralogy. The first thing to learn is how to learn: "Il faut apprendre à apprendre ;" and for this it is requisite that the first thing taught should be difficult to learn, and necessarily retained when it is learnt. I know nothing so good for this purpose as the Latin grammar. Boys, it is said, do not understand it. What does this signify? They do understand that a nominative case goes before the verb; and they come in a short time to learn where each part of speech must be placed, and how it depends upon another. If Mr. Locke is right in his estimate of the importance of words, this is a point of great consequence. And who can doubt that he is right? It is to a dogged ap

plication to the Latin grammar that I very much attribute the precision of men, when compared to women, in this country.

The Latin grammar learnt, I do not see that it is judicious or proper to make a boy read Ovid. I do not know that I should give him Ovid at all at school. Easy prose, then the poetry of Virgil, some arithmetic, the Greek granimar, Homer, some geometry, and a little geography, might come in their due order. Above all, I would make the boys translate into Latin an abridgement of the history of England, and of the first and last volumes of Blackstone. Many men go through the House of Commons totally ignorant that a prisoner must be furnished with a list of witnesses in cases of high treason.

French and Italian should be taught, if at all, very sparingly. It will be sufficient to lay a foundation for learning, at a more mature age, those parts of knowledge that are likely to be sought voluntarily, and may be acquired easily.

I know not whether it would be practicable to introduce improvements of the kind I have mentioned into our great public schools. If the

masters should resist it, it seems to me that an excellent opportunity for making a good school is afforded by the Military College at Sandhurst. It is very right that a certain number of the sons of men who have died for their country should be brought up at the expence of the state; but it is a very wrong thing to bring up a set of young men for military service, totally separate from all other classes of the community. "In a land of liberty," says Blackstone, "it is extremely dangerous to make a distinct order of the profession of arms. The laws, therefore, and constitution of these kingdoms know no such state as that of a perpetual standing soldier, bred up to no other profession than that of war."

What could be easier than to make a foundation for a certain number, with the qualifications of being the sons of poor officers, or officers' widows, who might afterwards choose their profession; and to institute at the same place a school where education might be conducted in a manner suitable to the knowledge of the present age?

As it is at present, there is no doubt that

women of the higher ranks have much more knowledge and information, when their education is finished, than men have. But I cannot see any reason why our men should not, whilst they have the advantages of public schools, at the same time be able to do a sum in the ruleof-three, and make themselves masters of the fact, that James I. was not the son of Queen Elizabeth.

CHAP. XXV.

'POOR LAWS.

Generally it is to be foreseen (i. e. provided) that the population of a kingdom, especially if it be not mown down by wars, exceed not the stock of the kingdom, by which it is to be maintained. BACON.

THERE is nothing, perhaps, in the whole state of England more threatening to its tranquillity and the permanence of its constitution than the present administration of the poor-laws. The perversion which has been made of them from the original meaning of the statute of Elizabeth, has at length fallen most heavily upon those who thought to draw from it a selfish gain.

The statute of the 49th of Elizabeth seems to have had its rise in a general increase of idle poor throughout the country. The notion that